Elemental
Elemental combines familiar silhouettes of an espresso group-head with a intuitive modern touch interface, all wrapped together in a sleek, clean form that matches the simplicity and clarity that a well brewed cup of filter coffee can provide.
The UI had to be intuitive as a purely touch based interface while still communicating movement and a sense of urgency to the user. I wanted to avoid the basic - almost traditional at this point - style of touch UI so I went with more of a sci-fi theme inspired by TNG LCARS, but actually, you know - usable.
Somewhat a homage to the 'okudagrams' that started with Trek and kind of spread to every sci-fi thing ever. On TV, their purpose was just to make it look like there was always something going on in the background; here, the idea was to alleviate the comparatively longer time it takes for filter coffee to brew - almost to give the illusion that more is happening than there actually is.
This was an old university concept that I revamped last year into more of an in-depth personal project.
The idea was for a very stripped back, modernist approach, with nothing really hidden in terms of function: you can see almost everything; nothing more than what you need to make a good cup of coffee. Hence, elemental.
There was limited capacity for physical prototyping, so CAD + simulation software was used to quickly iterate and solve problems with the design. Surprisingly, this actually worked fairly well, at least in this case.
Blender mantaflow simulations were used on the CAD models were used to help drive the water channels and filter arrangement.
The elaborate grooves (top) on the dripper was an attempt to avoid having a sprinkler in order to distribute the water. The heating element is also woven through this section, to prevent hot water from needing to be pumped up the exposed pipe.
Sneaky little MacPro reference in the internal compartments - not that I'm a big Apple fan necessarily; I just thought it looked much neater than bare PCBs. Plus, more protection from any potential leaks.
A fun little personal project - resurrected from the uni archives.